I’m sure you’ve heard Muzak before. But I doubt you’ve ever listened to it.

Muzak is the company that churns out that cheesy department store and elevator music. Generally speaking, Muzak means songs from the 80s and 90s, played on a lame synthesizer, with no words. It immediately becomes part of the bland background of a shopping experience, the aural version of gray floor tiles and fluorescent lights. If you notice Muzak at all, it is because some melody is vaguely familiar. After briefly locating the melody your attention quickly returns to the topic at hand. Muzak is not captivating, it is not moving, it is not life-changing.

Has the gospel turned into Muzak for you?

This thought occurred to me as we sung “O For A Thousand Tongues to Sing” on Sunday:

Jesus! the name that charms our fears,
that bids our sorrows cease;
’tis music in the sinner’s ears,
’tis life and health and peace.

He breaks the power of cancelled sin,
he sets the prisoner free:
his blood can make the foulest clean;
his blood availed for me.

But what if the gospel isn’t music to you? What if the name of Jesus—who He is and what He’s done—has turned into Muzak? You know this has happened if, like Muzak, you hear it, but don’t really listen to it. That’s a problem.

John Piper explains how to transform Muzak into the music of true worship:

“There are always two parts to true worship. There is seeing God and there is savoring God. You can’t separate these. You must see him to savor him. And if you don’t savor him when you see him, you insult him. In true worship, there is always understanding with the mind and there is always feeling in the heart. Understanding must always be the foundation of feeling, or all we have is baseless emotionalism. But understanding of God that doesn’t give rise to feeling for God becomes mere intellectualism and deadness. This is why the Bible continually calls us to think and consider and meditate, on the one hand, and to rejoice and fear and mourn and delight and hope and be glad, on the other hand. Both are essential for worship.” John Piper, The Supremacy of God in Preaching, 10.

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